ABSTRACT

Apart from Andreae and the unknown persons who may have cooperated with him in spreading the Rosicrucian myth, there are two writers who are generally recognized as the chief exponents of Rosicrucian philosophy. These are Robert Fludd and Michael Maier. Though both Fludd and Maier denied that they were Rosicrucians, they both spoke with interest and approval of the Rosicrucian manifestos, and their philosophies are, roughly speaking, in line with the attitudes expressed in the manifestos. But the modes of thought which are veiled in the fictions of Fama, Confessio, and Wedding are developed by Fludd and Maier into whole libraries of weighty books which were published in the years following the appearance of those three exciting works. Fludd gives most full expression to the philosophy of macrocosm and microcosm; Maier gives brilliant expression to the themes of spiritual alchemy. The solid support of Fludd and Maier imparts reality to the

It is thus with a sense of satisfaction, as of a confirmation from another quarter of the correctness of the historical line of approach followed in the preceding chapters, that one notes that the major works of Fludd and Maier were published in the Palatinate during the reign of Frederick V. The huge tomes of Robert Fludd’s ‘History of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm’ were published by Johann Theodore De Bry at Oppenheim in 1617, 1618, 1619. Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens, a book of emblems in which spiritual alchemy reached a high point of artistic expression, was published by Johann Theodore De Bry at Oppenheim in 1618. Oppenheim was the first Palatinate town entered by Elizabeth in 1613 on her arrival in her new country where she was welcomed with triumphal arches. One of these has been reproduced earlier (Pl. 2); it was covered with roses and engraved by Johann Theodore De Bry.